


The Fist, the Wave, the Current

by nyaheato



Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Ben 10: Omniverse, Ben Is Traumatized, Episode: s02e22 Showdown Part 2, Gen, Young Ben Tennyson, and also trans coded, idk if thats a tag skhfh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:41:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22627282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyaheato/pseuds/nyaheato
Summary: Malware had ripped a bleeding chunk out of you six years ago, and today he had come for the rest of you. Maybe it was your fate all along, you figure. Maybe in death, you consider, you’ll find him again.
Relationships: Ben Tennyson & Feedback (Ben 10 Series)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	The Fist, the Wave, the Current

The sky shines, brightly quiet, still and peaceful in the warm summer air. You sigh, pointedly ignoring the heat lingering behind your eyes, and the tension flows out of your body like an electric current. 

This is better. This is okay.

A vehicle approaches and rumbles to a stop behind you, idling, but you don’t turn because you know what happens and you don’t want to relive it. That black fist around your heart is back. So much for any kind of peace.

The scene plays back in your mind again, a tape you’ve scrubbed through many times over. A dark, unnatural figure looming over you, the primal panic as it envelops parts of you, trying to consume you in such a way that you still feel dirty whenever the memory returns. Defiant frustration because you have something to prove, beating away the creeping feeling that you’re going to lose. 

And then.

Searing pain as a part of you is ripped violently away. An indescribably awful loneliness as you watch yourself die, crushed into ashes quietly carried away by the breeze. You’ve failed even as you banish the beast and the light envelops you, surrounding but never again filling you. The hole inside of you smolders. You want to be him, but he’s dead. You are him, and he is dead. 

You are dead. You are dead, but you carry on.

 _Click._ The recording ends, and you watch a smaller version of yourself trudge into your house from a distance, unable to keep yourself from listening to your family worry over you.

_...Is Ben going to be okay?_

_Yeah. Give him time._

You want to scoff, but know it would be misplaced. You love them, and they had been right from the beginning, but they could never have understood. Not after, or even before. Sometimes, you can acutely feel your human skin stretching over your body, the thin organ a veneer over bone and muscle, blood and tissue, itching, pulsing, sliding back and forth. Feedback had been a safe haven. Somehow, he’d felt like coming home.

Speaking of which, you’re not sure when you entered the doorway, but you find yourself watching Azmuth dispense some kind of wisdom to your smaller self, self in question lying face down on the foyer couch. It’s a conversation remembered many times over, and not in any forgiving light; the only difference this time is a higher perspective.

You sigh. Reliving one of the worst times of your life kind of sucks, but it’s better than facing Malware outside in the real world. The thought elicits a shudder, familiar anxiety rushing through your veins, a static tsunami. You shove it away, irritated. You’d fought as hard as you could, again, and lost. Again. Malware had ripped a bleeding chunk out of you six years ago, and today he had come for the rest of you. Maybe it was your fate all along, you figure. Maybe in death, you consider, you’ll find him again.

_Did you?_

Find him? Well. Not yet.

“Did you learn from it?”

The voice, suddenly clear, and eerie coming from another body, snatches your focus. Before, everything had been cloudy, and you just a part of the backdrop, an observer. Now, you realize, you’re a focal point in the scene. 

The boy stares plaintively up at you with the same green eyes you meet in the mirror every day. At first, you can muster nothing but contempt.

 _Did I_ learn _from it? How can you learn from death? How can you expect me to learn from death? Is there even anything after that? I was just a stupid kid._

...You were just a stupid kid.

The eyes cut into you, horribly familiar. But you can’t help but notice the height difference between you, the baby fat, the young, young voice. 

That feeling takes hold of you again; the fist, the wave, the current. You let it, hold it there. You were just a kid.

You’ve never been whole; not really. Not since the Omnitrix. All those different forms that were you, but also definitely weren’t. You’ve since splintered into countless other pieces, scattering yourself because if you think too hard about all the things that have happened to all the fragments of yourself you think you might scream, or maybe die again. 

The same multitudinality strikes you now, facing the familiar child in front of you. How can you blame him, knowing the tears he cried, the way he keened? He was so young. He still is. 

You know you can’t forgive yourself yet. But this kid? The scrawny boy with the messy brown hair, thrust into immense power and responsibility at far too young an age to be any kind of healthy?

 _Yeah_ , you decide. _Yeah, I can forgive you._

His hand is silky in yours, and if you didn’t know better, you’d say you felt a warm electrical hum just under the skin, like an old friend, or a phantom limb returned.

**Author's Note:**

> mmmm i havent written anything in a long ass time but i was having FEELINGS about how scary and awful losing feedback must have been for ben so i had to write this, i hope u enjoyed and also i'm sorry ehehe


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